Steelcase SILQ Chair Named Best of the Best by Red Dot Awards

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SILQ chair recognized for innovative product design in top international design competition

Grand Rapids, Mich., April 09, 2019 (Globe Newswire) -- The Steelcase® SILQ™ chair, a breakthrough in seating design, has won the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2019. The chair, created to respond intuitively to movement of the body, earned the Red Dot: Best of the Best, which the renowned jury only awards to products that feature an outstanding design.

SILQ was created through an innovation in materials science. Through a patent-pending process, Steelcase designers and engineers created a new high-performance polymer material that emulates the qualities of carbon fiber. This material, combined with the arched silhouette of the design, allows SILQ to respond to natural movements of the human body without the mechanisms typically required in high-performance seating designed for the workplace. The result is a chair that behaves more like an organism than a machine – a new archetype in office seating.

“It’s an honor to be recognized by distinguished designers from around the world for our innovative design. The shape of SILQ, the materials it’s made of and how it performs are inseparable,” said James Ludwig, Steelcase vice president, global design and engineering. “We pushed the boundaries of materials science and the material became the mechanism. This is the pinnacle of what design and engineering can do together.”

The Red Dot Award: Product Design is one of the world’s largest design competitions. For over 60 years, an international jury comprised of experienced experts from different disciplines convenes to select the year’s best designs. Their assessment focuses on criteria such as the level of innovation, functionality, formal quality, longevity and ergonomics. In 2019, designers and manufacturers from 55 countries entered more than 5,500 products in the competition. The Red Dot: Best of the Best only went to 1.5% of the entries this year – a testament to their unparalleled design.

Steelcase will celebrate the success of SILQ and join the many other recipients at the Red Dot Gala on July 8, 2019. Awards will be presented on stage at Essen’s Aalto-Theater and award-winning products will be displayed in the exhibition “Design on Stage” in the Red Dot Design Museum Essen. From that date, SILQ will also be on show in the Red Dot Design Yearbook, online and in the Red Dot Design App.

For over 105 years, Steelcase Inc. has helped create great experiences for the world’s leading organizations, across industries. We demonstrate this through our family of brands – including Steelcase®, Coalesse®, Designtex®, PolyVision®, Turnstone®, Smith System®, Orangebox® and AMQ®. Together, they offer a comprehensive portfolio of architecture, furniture and technology products and services designed to unlock human promise and support social, economic and environmental sustainability. We are globally accessible through a network of channels, including over 800 Steelcase dealer locations. Steelcase is a global, industry-leading and publicly traded company with fiscal 2019 revenue of $3.4 billion.

About the Red Dot Design Award

In order to appraise the wide scope of design in a professional manner, the Red Dot Design Award is broken down into the three distinct disciplines: the Red Dot Award: Product Design, Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design and Red Dot Award: Design Concept. With more than 18,000 submissions, the Red Dot Award is one of the largest design competitions in the world. In 1955, a jury convened for the first time to assess the best designs of the day. The name and brand of the award were developed in the 1990s by Red Dot CEO, Professor Dr. Peter Zec. Since then, the sought-after Red Dot is the revered international seal of outstanding design quality. The winners are presented in yearbooks, museums and online. Further information: www.red-dot.org.